What is this nonsense?
Nihilism for Dummies is a "weblog" that looks at, in rough and compressed fashion, current events from a decidely pseudo-nihilistic point of view. This is not meant to be "high-minded" or "insightful" - it's mostly just an online journal of thoughts and notes. I don't really pretend to be one of those "bloggers," who are busy pretending to change the online media world. I'm just a guy who writes for the amusement of the occassional visitor.
If you came here looking for good, old-fashioned information on nihilism, you are just plain out of luck. But, you can read this amusing Primer on Nihilism over at blogspot.
Quote of the Day:
(or longer, if I don't change it)
"The candidate does not speak for the campaign."
Tucker Bounds, adviser to John McCain. Unfortunately, this quote is not directly sourced but he supposedly said this on Fox News. Go figure.
Obligatory Stupid Tracker!
Going back to this tracker, temporarily. Still, though, please actually take a minute to mail me if you wander in here and tell me what you think. It can't get better if I do this in a vacuum. Unless, you know, it's one of those Dyson vacs - cause those are sweet. We've got one, you know...
This space reserved for future misuse:
This sentence is in Spanish when you are not looking. Esta oracin esta en ingles cuando usted no esta mirando.
31 May 2009
Nihilism in a nutshell
One of the hits for the phrase "nihilism for dummies" is from a site called christianlinks.com. Its main contributor is, oddly, named Christian and so I have a lot of trouble deciding if the links are supposed to be Christian or Christian's. I have now set the record for fastest digression offtopic.
Christian writes, "Hey all you Nihilists. I was wondering if one of you could explain your belief for me in a nutshell."
Yes. That is the entire post. What is funnier is that comments for the post are closed. Even funnier is that I cannot even locate contact info for Christian the Christian. And even if I did, I don't think I could be bothered to explain anything to him. Her?
Obama's Change is Spare
If Barack Obama accomplishes nothing else in his time as President of the United States of America, he may well go down in history as the President who had the shortest honeymoon with his supporters. And, not incidentally, also the one who spent the least amount of time looking to begin a messy love affair.
I certainly didn't expect much out of Obama. I am, by nature, a cynic and according to my results on the Political Compass I am also wildly out of touch with mainstream American political views. The campaign season was almost painful for me, listening every day to conservatives of every stripe babble about "redistribution" or "socialism" and knowing that they were either incredibly misinformed or were attempting to create an incredibly misinformed base of popular support. Either way, it was too little and too late to save the sinking GOP ship (which perhaps is finally imploding underneath the incredible cognitive dissonance it has carried around in its tiny head all these year), and we were left with President Obama. You know, the one who campaigned on "hope" and "change."
His supporters now are seeing this change as also a case of too little, too late.
Sadly, it isn't a familiar story. Which is one reason I am surprised that anyone has actually been caught off guard by Obama's odd decisions of late. His Democratic predecessor (whom I have already waxed philosophic about) also seemed to fall short of the wonderful promises he made to get elected. Or, as Jay Hair of the National Wildlife Fund said in 1993, "What started like a love affair looks like it may turn out to be more like date rape." It also happened, in a larger sense, after Solidarity won elections in Poland and after the ANC won control of South Africa. The party newly in power turns around and either continues the abuses of the past or creates brand new abuses.
In some cases, the causes are easy to diagnose and really are not much to talk about. I am willing to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt on, say, health care and suppose that the shattered economic system he inherited from Bush the Elder was simply to frail to impose a truly progressive, state-run health system. This is perhaps the most doubt I have ever handed out to a politician but it is for the sake of making some sort of argument later on, so it is for a good cause. For Obama, the doubt could also be extended for economic issues but, as yet, I have not heard much about his activity on that front. Instead, there has been issue with his turnabout on the issues of torture, the prison at Guantanamo Bay and his sudden urge to not utter the word "genocide" while in Armenia. (This latter point seems rather mild, but it does point to a greater overall problem.) Did Bush the Younger leave behind such a fragile foreign policy apparatus that Obama is afraid it will fly apart if he shakes it? If so, what does it say about what Obama was thinking as he ran for office? Was he just being naively optimistic, in which case his supporters might as well have voted for the Tooth Fairy (or Ralph Nader) or was he being deliberately misleading in the same sort of way the GOP was trying to cast him as a "radical," in which case his supporters might have done better with Santa Claus (or, why not? Ron Paul).
Either way, none of it still seems surprising to me - especially after seeing him appoint ex-Clinton aides and staffers to virtually every open position in the new Administration.
Ah, change is in the air and it smells just as stale as it did in 1992.
Useless Info:
This site, despite a paltry 1000 or so hits since May 2005 is still the number two search result on google for the phrase "Nihilism for Dummies." For a long time, it was the number one result. The moral of the story? Nihilists certainly don't waste time writing primers on nihilism.
Contact info:
Write to me and tell me that I am cynical, depressing and a pessimist and I will write back agreeing with every word!
Coming soon!
Convention coverage! Campaign coverage! Full collision coverage with the oddly-attractive girl in the Progressive commercials! A sea change in my attitude! Just kidding! More of the same bitching and moaning!
etscape Gray, circa 1996, in Full
Effect, yo.